


To Join the Sixth Parade

by noxelementalist



Category: Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue, Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, Power Rangers Megaforce, Power Rangers Wild Force, Power Rangers in Space
Genre: Bonding, Gen, Mentors, Talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 23:03:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17272820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxelementalist/pseuds/noxelementalist
Summary: “Oh,” Orion said. “So, basically, our lives…suck. A lot.”





	To Join the Sixth Parade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AncientElemental](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AncientElemental/gifts).



 “ _Sweet_ moves!”

 _What the—_ Orion thought as he jerked his head away. He had been kneeling at the base of the school water fountain to see if he could keep up his streak of catching water shots, which so far had lasted eight days, when the voice had suddenly spoken.

“Who- ah- ah,” he spluttered, coughing as the shot of water he’d just launched from the fountain crashed into the right side of his face. The water splashed coldly down, leaving small, dull dots of dampness on the white shirt and silver boxers Emma had told him to use for a night shirt.

“Nice,” another voice said, the words this time being echoed by what sounded like lighthearted chuckling from other people.

Orion brushed the water off his face. “Who’s there?” he finally managed to say, his voice sounding clear in the empty hall that was the first floor of Harwood County High School at night. At least, a hall that was supposed to be empty of everything but lockers, the water fountain, and Orion by then, but apparently wasn’t.

“We got the whole gang here!” the first voice said.

“That's not- we’re over by the stairs,” a third voice replied.

“And by we, he means the four of us,” the second one interrupted. “Even if our kid brother here is quiet.”

Orion got up from the floor and walked slowly towards the stairs, his socks sliding softly across the tile floor. “I didn’t think anybody else was here,” he said carefully as he walked away from the student lockers.

“Yeah, we guessed that right around the time you decided to pull a Risky Business and start dancing in your underwear,” the second voice teased.

“Excuse me, he was _obviously_ doing acrobatics,” the first voice said. “There’s nothing risky about that.”

“Are you— wait, have you _never seen_ —”

“Will you two hush up?” A fourth voice growled. “You’re scaring him.”

“Can you tell that?” the third voice asked.

“Yes.”

“I am not scared,” Orion huffed. “Trust me, it’s going to take way more than some totally not ominous voices talking about me in the middle of the night to make me…scared,” he finished lamely as he turned the corner to stand in front of the stairs.

Being alone at night in the school had taught Orion how the stairs should look. They should’ve looked greenish-grey and shadowed, maybe tinted bluish if the moon was low enough to streak through the blinds of the window at midpoint landing. The stairs should’ve sounded in muffled tones as his steps patted around them on the way up to the rooms labeled “gym” and “art room,” rooms Orion didn’t spend much time in other than to cut through the “gym” every morning to go into a room that held showers and towels to bath with.

Yet tonight the stairs were aglow, basking in the gleam of a pearly haze sweeping down from the midpoint window like water down the mine sluices Orion had grown up watching, its silvery light ebbing, flowing, and pooling around four figures that were on the staircase. Orion’s steps grew silent as he approached them— _the men_ , he realized as he drew closer— as if their light was not to be disturbed by something as mundane as a body moving through space.

The four men regarded Orion with a mixture of amusement and pride as he looked around them, trying to process what he saw.

The first sat at the top of the stairs, his feet stretched idly out over the top few steps. His face was young, his hair fairer in the light than Orion’s was, though it looked like it had been cut by someone dropping a bowl around the man’s head and chopping whatever had escaped the edge. The man wore a shimmering blue shirt which dipped open around his collarbone, its cut one Orion had seen Noah favor. Around his neck lay a thin, silver chain. _He…actually looks a little like me,_ Orion found himself thinking as the man winked at him.

The second sat a few steps below the first. He was resting his back against the wall of the school, with one leg folded in and the other leg extended across a step, his arms tucked behind his head as if he’d gone to an Earth high school and done exactly this a thousand times before. _He seems older._ His hair was made of short, spiky strands that didn’t glow, but somehow managed to remain almost pitch dark despite the haze teasing around them them. It would’ve been incredibly eerie if it wasn’t for how the long, bluish sleeves of his shirt and legs of his pants glimmered, the light turning them pale.

Across from the second man stood a third, who was leaning back against the railing of the steps as if he had no fear of tipping over it. He seemed the youngest to Orion, though he was clearly related to them, his features a mix of the two. His shirt was cut like the first, but was as pitch dark as the second’s hair. His hair was spiked like the second man, but its color was bronze, almost brazen in the haze of silver light and the darkened hallway around them. He too wore a thin chain around his neck, but it was gold.

Finally, at the base of the stairs, looking up at Orion, sat the fourth. _There’s no way he’s a kid,_ Orion thought as he looked. _He looks older than all of them._ Unlike his brothers, the fourth’s hair was neither spiked nor bowled, but hung down along the sides of his face, long bangs glistening in the as they fell across his eyes in sharp contrast to hair the pearly light had turned a richly brown Orion had thought only the inside of the cliffs of Andresia could have been. His clothes too seemed older: where the others wore shirts and long-sleeves, he wore what looked like to be a sort of long-sleeved jacket over a silvery fabric that Orion guessed must have been some kind of t-shirt. It reminded Orion of what Troy wore, but where the Red Ranger wore bright reds and whites, the fourth man was far more muted in color.

 _If there was a fifth one of them,_ Orion thought as he took the sight in, _they could’ve been one of those boy bands Jake keeps complaining about._

“Hi!” the one at the top shouted jarringly.

“…Hi?”

“Instinctual manners,” the one leaning across the wall said to the man across from him. “The kid’s got class.”

“ _Hey._ I may be a miner’s kid, but I’ve got _manners_ ,” Orion replied. “Unlike you, you…ah…”

“You have no idea who we are, do you.” asked the man at the bottom, sounding amused.

“I’m guessing you’re not members of the Armada,” Orion replied, feeling his shoulders begin to relax when he saw that the man hadn’t moved towards him.

“You think?”

“Well if you were, we’d probably be fighting right now, so…”

The one against the wall sighed. “That’s Zhane,” he said, pointing at the top of the stairs. “I’m Mike. That’s Ryan,” he added gesturing back at the man across from him, who responded by raising a ghostly hand to rest vertically by the side of his face before twitching it forward, a gesture Orion thought was some kind of salute.

“Yo,” Ryan said.

“And the quiet one down there is Merrick,” Zhane said from the top of the stairs. “You’re Orion, right?”

“Yes,” Orion said. “How did you—”

“Please, we’re not _that_ stupid,” Ryan said. “Of course we’d know our youngest member.”

“Newest,” Mike corrected. “Sam’s the youngest.”

Ryan glared at Mike. “Sam’s not a Ranger. Yet, anyway.”

“Oh don’t start that again,” Merick grumbled.

“Nice calling on our keys, by the way,” Zhane said to Orion. “Man, the look on the face of Zordon’s intern when we warped them out of there. I thought Cam would _never_ stop laughing.”

“Zordon’s intern?”

“It’s what we’ve taken to calling Gosei,” Merrick said, getting up from the bottom steps. “Blame Jason.”

“Blame the Red is a general rule of thumb for us Sixes,” Mike added.

“Thought Jason was Gold?” Merrick asked him.

“Yeah, and when have you seen him _not_ blame himself or Tommy?”

“Weren’t you _almost_ Red?” Zhane said pointedly.

“Right until I fell into a cosmic abyss,” Mike said defensively, “but it doesn’t count anyway, I just drew the sword for my brother.”

“That makes absolutely _no_ \- wait you’re _all_ Sixth _Power Rangers_?” Orion stammered.

“Yes,” Ryan said, gesturing around him. “Silver Space, Titanium, Lunar Wolf, and Magna Defender, all at your service.”

“We thought we’d check in on you,” Zhane said, pushing himself off the stairs to jump down next to Merrick. “See how you’re doing with this whole Ranger business thing.”

“ _We_ wanted to check in on you back when you first got your morpher,” Mike corrected, gesturing at Ryan. “But _someone_ thought we’d be better off letting you try out morphing first.”

“They’re older brothers with military security training,” Zhane explained as the two men walked down the steps towards Orion. “Trying to micromanage people everyone and everything for their safety is in their blood. But don’t worry, the rest of us are pretty good at letting you do what you gotta do.”

“Oh.” Orion said cautiously. “That…seems alright to me?”

Merrick rolled his eyes, a youthful gesture that struck Orion as being surreal on an otherwise aged face. “Come on kid,” he said, stepping forward to wrap an arm around Orion, the weight surprisingly warm on his shoulder. “Show us around this place.”

“What’s to see?” Orion asked curiously. “It’s a school. They teach the other Rangers stuff here. That’s kind it.”

“My team had already finished human high school when I met them,” Ryan said, shuffling to stand on Orion’s other side. “So had Merrick’s and Mike’s. We have no idea what it’s like to be inside one, let alone attend one.”

“Excuse you, I _went_ to a human high school on Earth,” Mike said. “Graduated top of my class even. But I still want to check this place out anyway,” he told Orion, “because it’s been, like, twenty years, and I want to know what things look like now.”

“My team probably should’ve been in high school,” Zhane interrupted, moving to stand in front of Orion, leaving Mike to follow behind them. “But they were in space, and by the time we got back to Earth they had kind of aged out. Though hey, space travel! Saving the universe! Totally makes up for getting a…oh what did they call it…a GED.”

Orion blinked. “Well,” he said slowly, “in that case, I guess I could show you around.”

 

***

 

“So this is where they eat,” Merrick said as the men looked around. “Seems…impersonal.”

“It is,” Orion confirmed, choosing to stand near the door while he watched as the four Rangers ( _Sixth Rangers,_ he reminded himself, _they’re your…Sixth Rangers)_ looked around, the glow radiating off of them and what little moonlight shown through the windows more than enough to light up the cafeteria to reveal the numerous white tables with red benches that dotted the space. “And as far as I can tell the food’s filling, but not that great? At least, I haven’t heard anybody really praising it.”

“Cafeteria food rarely is good,” Mike added as he looked around. “I mean, I lucked out, my high school managed to get fast food folks to come in, but we’re still talking a lot of grease and bread there. You don’t wanna know what you got if you didn’t.”

“And you…ate that?” Zhane asked, sounding horrified.

Mike shrugged. “Public high schools like this one don’t get a lot of money for high quality, personalized meals, unless someone’s hooking them up with government money,” he said, “but you gotta feed the hordes of teenagers something to keep them going.”

“And you? You eat here often?” Ryan asked Orion, looking concerned. “Willingly, I mean.”

Orion shook his head. “One of the first things I did when I got here was get a job at a local food place as part of my cover,” Orion told him as the Titanium Ranger poked at nearby table. “I sneak meals from there instead.”

“Thank you baby Zordon,” Ryan sighed, sounding relieved, the remark causing Zhane to snicker.

“Where _exactly_ are you sneaking meals from?” Merrick asked.

“Like, what’s its name?” Orion asked, causing the Lunar Wolf to nod his head. “Ah, Ernie’s Brainfreeze.”

“Wait, Ernie?” Zhane said excitedly. “Hey, Mike, think it’s our Ernie?”

“I don’t think so,” Mike called back thoughtfully from across the room. “Last I checked he was still with his reserve unit trying to help rebuild that statue down in Rio de Janeiro. What’s your Ernie look like?”

“He’s little shorter and broader than me,” Orion said, trying to picture the man in his mind. “ _Way_ older. Dark eyes. Bald. Has really tan skin—”

“And that makes it a no,” Zhane said, walking over towards a counter where Orion thought someone served food during the day. “Ours was pastier.”

“His food’s better though?” Merrick asked, sweeping a finger distastefully across a table. “Or at least cleaner?”

“It seems to be some kind of frozen dessert bar?” Orion said, shuffling towards him. “At least, that’s what the people eating there think. But it’s got a lot of edible fruits, which we serve blended up. Oh, and there’s what I’m pretty sure is some kind of liquid protein thing we use to thicken and chill the fruit stuff sometimes. It’s pretty healthy as far as I can tell,” Orion continued, “and tastes way better than what we used to get in the mines. You can easily make a meal out of it if you wanted to.”

“The protein thing’s probably yogurt,” Ryan told him while moving to straddle the end of one the red benches. “Maybe ice cream, if they want something sweeter.”

“That’s what they call it, but—”

“Oh, I had that!” Zhane said to the Megaforce Silver Ranger. “Yeah, it’s a fermented lactase-protein mix. Humans derive it from certain breeds of Earth mammals. Definitely a healthy source of food and vitamins, and I find it tastes better cold than hot.”

“Fermented lactase- it’s _milk_ ,” Mike said loudly to the Silver Space from where he’d gone to look out the room’s windows stood. “Milk. Why would you need a chemical breakdown?”

“Hey, as a fellow alien space ranger, I understand the difficulties of adapting ways to a new culture and its food presentation,” Zhane said defensively. “You try figuring out what’s edible when it’s all processed and packaged up.”

“It’s not that hard.”

“When you put the same thing in cardboard boxes, plastic jugs and bags, all of different sizes, in a refrigerator and on a shelf, _and with different labels_ , oh yes it is.”

“Wait- wait you’re an alien too?” Orion interrupted.

“Seriously?” Ryan asked him. “Did _nobody_ talk about Rangers on your home world?”

“It looked like a small colony, from what we could see from the morpher,” Zhane told him before Orion could speak. “Probably a bit more focused on, you know, getting a town set up. I’m from KO-35,” Zhane added, nodding at Orion, “and proud of it!”

“I’m from Andresia!”

“You’re from one of Andros’ colonies?! Oh no way!”

“So way,” Orion said. “We were just about to celebrate five years when…well…”

“Say no more,” Zhane told him, walking over from the counter. “You, oh young one, are now officially under my protection. Prepare to become awesome.”

“I—”

“Nu-uh, that wasn’t optional,” Zhane said. “Andros’ business is my business, and he has been _ranting_ about Andresia being hit nonstop for _months.”_

“He- he has?”

“Oh yeah,” Ryan groaned. “He’s taking the destruction of one of his forty-two colonies pretty bad. I’ve actually been meaning to ask Leo or Wes to tell him to shut it, and my patience outlasted the most annoyingly talkative Green Ranger ever.”

“Go with Wes,” Mike told him, walking away from the window to where the other Rangers had gathered. “Leo’s upset about the Armada attack himself. Space colonies hang tight you know.”

“But seriously, between that and the sixth thing? We’re going to be _so close_ ,” Zhane continued.

“Warn us if you decide to join him in the boxer slide at night,” Merrick told him.

Zhane shrugged. “You only say that ‘cause you’d want to join in, don’t lie.”

“Tyzonn might,” Merrick replied. “He’s very…mercurial.”

“That’s Merrick polite way of saying he’s not psychotic enough,” Mike teased, making Zhane glare at him.

“Back to the part though where he’s not starving of malnutrition,” Ryan interrupted the other Rangers. “Seriously, this Ernie’s Brainfreeze any good?”

“Yeah,” Orion said, nodding. “I mean, I’m making pretty much everything there, and I’m not sick. And,” he went on, “the other Rangers come over and visit me a lot, and I’m pretty sure Gia or Noah would stop me from eating something bad.”

“Oh good, so your team has an eatery,” Merrick said.

“An eatery?”

“A lot of us had hangout places,” Ryan explained as Mike came to sit down beside him, shuffling behind the Titanium Ranger on the bench. “Most of them surrounding food and drink.”

“Cam thinks it has to do with replacing the energy morphing takes out of us,” Merrick added. “My team liked to order food, but I lived and worked in a roadside bar called Willie’s.”

“Like a miner’s diner, but for townsfolk,” Zhane explained to Orion. “Mine split time between Ernie’s Juice Bar, which had…well, a lot of juice and desserts, like your Brainfreeze, and a place called the Surf Spot which did tropical stuff.”

“Mine lived on a military base, so we actually did have a cafeteria of sorts,” Ryan said, wincing. “We wound up ordering out. A lot.”

“We didn’t have a cafeteria or a lot of restaurants,” Mike admitted, “but my team lived on a space colony, so mostly we just made do with what we could cook up?”

“Which planet is the colony on?” Orion asked, curiously. “The one you live on, I mean.”

“We eventually settled on Mirinoi, but most of the Rangering took place while we were travelling there on Terra Venture.”

“That’s right, you guys went off _after_ Andros and me left Earth,” Zhane commented. “Forgot about that.”

“Mirinoi’s far from…everything, isn’t it?” Orion asked.

“Took us a really long time to get there,” Mike said, grinning, “and we’ve pretty much been staying there ever since.”

“So there’s a lot of us from space then?” Orion said, not sure if he liked how hopeful his voice sounded.

Zhane shook his head. “It’s you, me, and Tyzonn, though I guess Mike counts.”

“Hey!”

“What, ah, what about…”

“Having their entire family killed and homes wiped out?” Merrick asked flatly.

“Geeze, man,” Zhane whispered into the silence that had followed the Lunar Wolf’s words. “You wanna go after his puppy too?”

“What, it’s what he’s thinking,” Merrick told him. “Yes, a lot of us are like that. My whole world, civilization was destroyed. Only one, small remnant of its land remains.”

“I was kidnapped and raised by demons,” Ryan said helpfully.

Merrick glared at him. “Doesn’t count,” he told him. “You got your family back.”

“And you got Princess Shayla back!”

“KO-35 was destroyed too,” Zhane said, sounding to Orion like he was trying to choose his words with more care than the Lunar Wolf had. “And family-wise… well, between us Sixes there’s a _lot_ of dead moms and dead dads, long-lost brothers, and a couple more of us who got thrown forward or backwards in time for their Rangering, meaning everybody they knew had either died off or hadn’t been born.”

“Oh,” Orion said after a moment. “So, basically, our lives…suck. A _lot_.”

Mike laughed. “We also all survived, with a lot of us coming back from the dead, time travel, or even tortured imprisonment,” the Magna Defender pointed out. “Like, we got better. Made new friends and family. You’re in the middle of doing that too.”

“Other Rangers do make good relatives,” Ryan said, nudging Mike. “Even the ones not blood-related to you.”

“I…don’t know about that,” Orion said sheepishly. “I mean, they don’t know that I sleep in a locker, and my family—”

“Hold up,” Zhane interrupted angrily. “You _what?!_ ”

 

***

 

“You sleep folded up in _this_?!” Zhane shouted, his hands twitching as he gestured towards the surface of the upper metal box Orion had learned people on Earth considered a locker. Mike, Merrick, and Ryan stood close behind him, glaring at it threateningly, the looks appearing very ghastly to Orion in the hazy silver light that still surrounded the four men.

“Yeah, that’s my bed.”

“But- but it’s- tiny!”

“I thought about trying to sleep in a classrooms or the gymnasium,” Orion said, “but that felt wrong.”

“Exposed,” Merrick said knowingly. “Like anybody could attack you. Better to choose a small space you can defend.”

Orion nodded.

Mike huffed. “Okay, we can fix this,” he said to the other Rangers, folding his hands behind his head.

“Fix it?” Orion asked.

“We are _not_ leaving a Sixth Ranger sleeping in a metal box,” Ryan told him.

“But—”

“Yeah, as someone who was locked way in coma unit for years and still could _lay down flat_ , I am very pro you having more space to maneuver,” Zhane said. “Merrick, you in?”

“I was imprisoned with a demonic wolf spirit in a casket smaller than that at the end of a rock-carved kokh for millennia.”

“…So…”

“That is an _extreme yes_ ,” Merrick said.

“You really don’t have to do this,” Orion said.

“Yes we really, really do,” Mike told him. “Any ideas?”

“Start with the Red,” Merrick stated firmly.

“ _Troy_?” Orion blurted out, staring horrified at the other man. “Why would he—”

Mike sighed. “Reds tend to… _like_ us,” he grumbled.

“Just like, oh Magna Defender?” Ryan added, giving Mike a look Orion felt was almost teasing.

“Look, Leo is my _little brother_ ,” Mike told the Titanium Ranger. “There are _lines_ man.”

“Are there? Are there _really_?”

“Am I missing something?” Orion asked Zhane softly as the two Rangers began to bicker, the silvery light flickering as they gestured towards each other.

“A lot of Reds try to date us,” Zhane whispered back. “A _lot.”_

“Like….”

“Like out of the twenty-one known Sixth Rangers of Earth, eighteen of us had Red Rangers flirting with us, and the ones who didn’t were related to their Reds.”

“Yeah, that’s- that’s a lot.”

“It gets awkward fast,” Merrick added quietly, moving closer towards the Megaforce Silver Ranger. “Especially if you’re already committed to someone else.”

“Oh.”

“Or if you’re practically helping mentor them as Rangers,” Merrick continued. “Or if you turn out to be their one friend from their childhood who left them before it occurred to them they’d want to date you.”

“Yeah, I mean, dating Andros wasn’t a problem, though it did make things rough with Karone for a bit—” Zhane began.

“By rough,” Merrick mumbled, “he means, Karone turned him down first, twice, and then he actually had to remind Andros he wasn’t interested in dating their Yellow, Ashley, the way Andros was—”

“—And Merrick here was in a committed pine-ship with a princess who’s literally the last of the women of his people—”

“—and Ryan and his sister both went after their Red, at the same time, and _succeeded,"_ Merrick finished, scowling at the Silver Space Ranger.

“That…sounds problematic,” Orion said slowly, “but, I mean, at least the Sixth who wanted to date them did.”

“Well sure, but it still didn’t make for a smooth spaceship flight,” Zhane told him. “I mean, just wait till your Red tries to get you to do something stupid like marry one of your teammates as a battle tactic. At that point you might as well take a deep breath and brace yourself for _days_ of angsty Red pining.”

“No way is Troy going to do that,” Orion insisted.

“All we’re saying is if he does, you should take that as a really passive-aggressive attempt to get you to say no before he tries to ask you out,” Merrick told Orion. “Because Reds will try to get you to reject them first if they can that to save them the heartache.”

“Really?”

“Mine tried to guilt-trip me into a date by saying it was for the good of the team we get closer, and I was very clearly _not_ interested in dating him to begin with.”

“…Wow.”

“I _know_.”

“I’m just saying, there must’ve been _plenty_ of people who were into having some quality family time with the Corbett brothers,” Ryan was saying.

“Little. Brother.” Mike gritted out. “ _Little. Brother.”_

“Please, like that would stop the demons _I_ grew up with from—”

“How are you not _getting_ this? I _know_ we’ve been over this—?”

“Ahem,” Merrick coughed, the sound drawing the other two’s attention. “Are we contacting his Red or no?”

“Oh yeah, we’re definitely doing that,” Mike replied, Ryan nodding in the background. “I just have to remind my fellow Sixth here that not _all_ of us try to involve our Reds in our _romantic, physically intimate relationships_ , and so in reaching out to his Red we shouldn’t abuse whatever feelings he’s got.”

“Unless you want us to. I have no problem proxy flirting,” Ryan said, winking at the Silver Megaforce Ranger while his words made Orion flush.

“See, now you’ve embarrassed him,” Mike said to Ryan. “Why are you like this?”

“Why are you not?”

“I dunno, because I’m _sane_?”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “We could be here a while,” Ryan told Orion. “You guys are welcome to give him the survival talk in the meantime if you like.”

Orion felt his eyes widen. “Survival talk?”

Zhane sighed. “How good are those doors at keeping out noise?” he asked, gesturing towards a nearby classroom as Mike began to argue with Ryan.

“…Pretty good? At least, I’ve never heard it get loud out here in the hallway during the day.”

“Perfect.”

 

***

 

“Good to see Earth’s mathematics hasn’t changed yet,” Merrick said as they walked in, Zhane shutting the door behind them.

“Yeah, it’s actually pretty easy compared to what we learned on Andresia to handle carving out the mines,” Orion told him as the Lunar Wolf looked at the blackboard. “I like to solve the problems the teacher leaves up when I get a chance, you know, try to keep busy.”

“Gotta fill these nighttime hours somehow,” Zhane said sympathetically. “And you don’t want to chance turning a computer on, in case you forget to turn it off.”

“Exactly.”

“And that instinct is why we give the survival talk,” Merrick said, moving to sit down on top of a large desk at the front of the room before pointing at a chair in front of him.

“…okay, I probably should’ve asked this before, but am I in trouble?” Orion asked as he moved to sit down.

“No, you’re okay.”

“Because I know you all liked the mass summon thing, apparently,” Orion continued, “but this is the first time you’ve visited and now I’m getting a talk, and I _swear_ , I didn’t mean to—”

“No, _really_ , you’re _not_ in trouble,” Zhane said, moving to sit next to him. “It’s just…”

“You’re traumatized,” Merrick said.

“Okay, you have _seriously_ got to lay off the direct line approach,” Zhane said grimacing. “It’s irritating.”

“I’m _what_?” Orion stammered, look back and forth between the two Sixth Rangers. “What- why would you- _how_ would you know that?”

“Look,” Merrick said. “I’m not saying you haven’t adapted well. You have. You secured access to food, water, shelter, clothing, and protection in record time. You’ve actually _trained_ before becoming a Power Ranger, I can tell from the way you fight you’ve spent time on that, and not just during the months we all felt you using the morpher.”

“And you obviously care deeply about your teammates if you’re willing to involve us into doing what’s technically a Ranger Power jailbreak to do a mass morph,” Zhane added. “But you’ve already admitted you’re afraid to do anything too noticeable at night, you’re folding yourself into a metal box to sleep for better self-defense, and the fact your team doesn’t know any of this means you’re keeping secrets from the people you call your friends. None of which is a good thing.”

“I—”

“And experience has shown us those things are connected,” Merrick told Orion. “Because you’re basically trying to make sure you’ll ready for another attack by the Armada. You’re trying to survive to help your team out. We get it. We’ve been there. But your job is to _live_ , not survive.”

“But I can’t just- I mean, they’re all I’ve _got_ ,” Orion protested. “It’s not like I can get my old life back, and if I lose the Rangers, or if people find out I’m an alien and think I’m part of the Armada, I’m-”

“Dead?” Zhane asked, resting a hand on Orion’s shoulder, the touch almost uncomfortably warm in the cool classroom air. “Believe me, we _know_. The feeling of why you’re the last one standing, the list of things you’d do differently. The messages you missed but could’ve, should’ve heard. The times you could’ve zigged instead of zagged, always wondering how things could’ve been different, maybe even better. Looking up at the moon and wondering what your parents, your family, _anyone_ who knew you then would say if they could see you, be here now.”

“The roaming around trying to understand how you’re supposed to enjoy life when the people you love is dead,” Merrick said in hushed, reverent tones. “Working strange hours in strange places, trying not to get too close to anyone so they don’t get hurt. Trying to handle everything by yourself because you can’t stand the idea of anyone else having to. Never feeling like you can give all your secrets to anyone, just in case you wake up tomorrow and it’s their charred and attacked body you find.”

“Always feeling out of place,” Zhane continued. “One conversation behind, one reference late, trying to laugh at people and work your way through conversations, all hoping you can fake it until you make it because maybe if you pretend you haven’t missed out on months and years of growing up around them you’ll get an open-arm welcome.”

“We know,” Merrick finished. “We know.”

For a brief second, there was a silence in the classroom.

“…it’s not just me, is it,” Orion said eventually.

“No, it’s- it’s all of us,” Zhane sighed, and for a brief moment Orion swore the glow around him dimmed.

“It’s called survivor’s guilt. It sucks.” Merrick said. “And it doesn’t go away. Ever.”

“So then…what am I supposed to do exactly?” Orion asked the pair. “Besides apparently ask Troy for somewhere to live.”

“ _We’ll_ be asking the Red,” Zhane told him. “You shouldn’t have had to go to him like this in the first place.”

“I don’t know how Troy’s going to take four Sixth Rangers of Rangers teams past suddenly appearing in his bedroom, but—”

“Not directly,” Merrick corrected. “We’ll ask _our_ Reds. Then they’ll ask him.”

“Ah.”

“It won’t be that bad,” Zhane assured Orion. “Rho Episolon Delta will probably take him out for a bit, give him a smoothie, and tell him in really small words to move you in _right now_.”

“Rho _what?”_

“The Reds have a fraternal order,” Merrick told Orion, hoping off the desk. “It’s about as much of a party as you can imagine.”

Orion tried to picture Troy partying the way he used to among the Andresian miners at the end of a long week. “I think Troy’s too quiet for that,” he said at last. “At least, the only times I’ve seen him really relax is at Ernie’s with us around him, so he doesn’t seem like a large party person.”

“He’ll be fine,” Merrick said. “Cole _alone_ can make you feel you’re frolicking in the fields. Three more Reds with him? Your Troy will be calm while getting _schooled_ in the error of his ways.”

“But to really answer your question, honestly, all you gotta do is give yourself a break,” Zhane told Orion, nudging him gently.

“A break?”

“Live a little, Zhane said. “Go outside of the creepy abandoned night school. It’s a process after all.”

“I bet.”

“You just put one foot in front of the other,” Merrick said, lightly kicking Orion’s foot under the desk, “and soon you’ll be walking out the door.”

“Seriously?”

“A fast walking man is hard to keep down,” Zhane said. “Before you know it you’ll be out there living it up like there’s a parade going on.”

“I…don’t know what I’d do out there,” Orion admitted.

“We don’t either,” Merrick told him. “You get to find out.”

“And tell us all about it,” Zhane said.

“I can do that?”

“Sure!” Zhane added. “The morpher will let you talk with any of us whenever you like! And when your Rangering days are over, we’ll be in touch.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re not dead yet,” Merrick told Orion. “We’re alive, just scattered. You can always call and write—”

“Wait, if you’re alive, then what’s with the light thing?” Orion interrupted, gesturing at the silver aura around them.

“This?” Zhane asked, blinking. “Oh, this is thing Sam came up with. It helps block out surveillance tapes so that we can move undetected.”

“We figured you wouldn’t want to come up with an alibi for tonight,” Merrick added.

“Huh. That’s _handy_.”

“It is,” Zhane said, “though come to think of it, you’re right, it’s a little ghastly, isn’t it?”

“Hey, we miss the survival talk?” Mike’s voice suddenly interrupted, causing Orion to glance over and watch as the Magna Defender and Ryan come into the classroom.

“Ugh, math,” Ryan said, seeing the blackboard. “You chose the right place for it alright.”

“Most of it,” Zhane answered. “Merrick skipped the intro and cut straight to the chase.”

“We’re on ‘action items’ then?” Mike asked, twitching the middle two fingers on each hand around his head in a gesture Orion guessed must’ve made sense to the other Sixth Rangers.

“We are,” Merrick told the Magna Defender, “though we’ve been pretty broad.”

“Good thing I’m here then, because I am _great_ at coming up with specifics,” Mike said, shuffling towards the blackboard. “Let the triage begin.”

 

***

 

Orion was almost falling asleep in his chair.

“Finally, item number thirty: ask for help,” Mike said, annotating the comment on the one corner of the board that hadn’t been covered with chalk yet. “We’re always here with you anyway, so you might as well, and we know more combined than Zordon’s intern does.”

“We _literally_ started with that one hour and three pieces of chalk ago,” Zhane told him, groaning from his own chair.

“Yeah, but you went _broad_.”

“Better than going overboard!”

“You think you got all of that?” Ryan asked Orion, gesturing at the board.

“I- ah- think so,” Orion said, yawning openly. “But I’m sure you’ll remind me.”

“We will if we need to,” Merrick told him.

Zhane grinned. “So, we’d love to stay and hang out more, but per item number six, you should get sleep,” he told the Silver Megaforce Ranger. “Come on, Ryan and Mike’ll set you up in a corner of the gym for the next couple nights until your Red gets you a place.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah, we’ll make sure you can rest unseen,” Ryan told him.

“It’s a side benefit of years of hide-and-seek with little siblings,” Mike added, smirking.

 

 

[Orion couldn’t remember much of what happened next. He could remember being walked over by the four Sixth Rangers to a far corner of the gym. Could remember Ryan and Mike rearranging the mats Orion vaguely remember seeing Jake and some of his classmates use in a class once to make a nest for him. Could remember Zhane tucking him in. He could even remember Merrick whispering he’d stand guard. But when he woke up the only hint Orion had that he hadn’t dreamed it all had been the feeling of a gloved hand gently patting his face and a baritone voice murmuring “wake up, kid.”

That, and Troy asking Orion to move in with him three days later.]


End file.
